Autopilot windscreen camera demister

[TM3PTN]

Hi guys,

Something I noticed this morning. I set the car to pre-condition before leaving for work this morning (with max heat today as it was freezing!). Everything looked like it was working fine. However, when I got to my car I noticed that the section for the cameras in the windscreen were still frosted up indicating that the heating element had not switched on. Is this normal?

I thought the heating element came on if you pre-conditioned - otherwise you're left with a section that is completely frosted.

Any advice here before I give tesla a shout would be great.

Thanks as always

 

[NorfolkMustard]

Not normal. If you have sentry mode on it normally keeps the cameras heated/ defrosted all night too.

 

[MrBadger]

Any advice here before I give tesla a shout would be great.

Would like to hear what they say.

Ours was definitely working back in first seasonal frost in Nov, but earlier this year, I witnessed exact this. So either something stopped working between Nov and Jan, or its not as straight forward as front defrost on when defrosting - fwiw, the time it didn't work, rear window defrost on - the camera patch was the only part of the car not defrosted.

I suspect on both occasions, sentry would have been in same mode.

Below some IR shots to show difference in heating element Nov vs Jan

 

[TM3PTN]

Would like to hear what they say.

Ours was definitely working back in first seasonal frost in Nov, but earlier this year, I witnessed exact this. So either something stopped working between Nov and Jan, or its not as straight forward as front defrost on when defrosting - fwiw, the time it didn't work, rear window defrost on - the camera patch was the only part of the car not defrosted.

I suspect on both occasions, sentry would have been in same mode.

Below some IR shots to show difference in heating element Nov vs Jan
View attachment 517169

Interesting! I haven't had this issue before so it has left my intrigued.

I don't leave Sentry on when the car is on my drive as we have our home CCTV recording anyway and my car is well covered by the cameras. My concern is that if it is frosted and i'm driving along then dash cam isn't recording anything ahead of me - surely they would have thought of something like this. I'll set up a service appt.

 

[MrBadger]

Not normal. If you have sentry mode on it normally keeps the cameras heated/ defrosted all night too.

I had not realised this, but thinking about it, common sense. So today, perfect conditions to quickly test.

Yep. Sentry mode puts the windscreen camera defrost on. No other climate modes.

Thankfully it shows, its not a hardware issue for us, so maybe something else prevented it being on last time?

 

[TM3PTN]

I had not realised this, but thinking about it, common sense. So today, perfect conditions to quickly test.

Yep. Sentry mode puts the windscreen camera defrost on. No other climate modes.

Thankfully it shows, its not a hardware issue for us, so maybe something else prevented it being on last time?

View attachment 517378

I have a service appt for Friday 13th (sounds ominous) so will report back after that.

I just find it really surprising that the element doesn't switch on to clear the frost in that area when preconditioning in freezing weather (if it is set up to not do this, i mean).

We shall see!